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Ascent §f Man 


By 

SAMUEL W. BALL 

M 

Author of “Effective Thinking” 




“The doctrine of the continuity of 
history is based upon the observed 
fact that every human institution, 
every generally accepted idea, every 
important invention, is but the sum¬ 
mation of long lines of progress, 
reaching back as far as we have the 
patience or means to follow them.” 

—James Harvey Robinson. 


1923 

Central School of Practical Psychology 

1605 West Van Buren Street 
Chicago, Illinois 









't> 


COPYRIGHTED 

1923 

By 

Samuel W. Ball 
All Rights Reserved 




MAR 19 1923 


© 


C1A701S13 



INTRODUCTION 


As Arthur Schopenhauer, Lafcadio Hearn and 
other master stylists have emphasized, the art of let¬ 
ters consists in making- great truths and concepts 
comprehensible and vivid; not, as many seem to sup¬ 
pose, in making the simple incomprehensible and 
vague. 

Clearness, impressiveness and brevity, in setting 
forth vast and profound generalizations are the su¬ 
preme evidence of a superior viewpoint and method. 
No popular writer in this country exemplifies these 
qualities more strikingly than Samuel W. Ball. 

Mr. Ball's lectures have been given before all 
kinds of audiences and under all kinds of circum¬ 
stances with equal success. He has delivered his 
famous address, “Ascent of Man", under various 
titles; in universities, before students and faculties; 
before classes of professional men and women; in 
churches, schools, libraries, halls; on street corners 
and lyceum platforms; in twenty-two states in the 
Union; during a period of fifteen years. His audi¬ 
ences have been uniformily responsive. Tired old 
men returning home from a hard day’s work in the 
mines or factories have stopped on the street and 
stood with feet glued to the ground, their lips uncon¬ 
sciously repeating the words of the speaker after him, 
their tears and laughter alternating spontaneously; 
small boys have given up their marbles and have lis¬ 
tened fascinated and eagerly comprehending; one 
appreciative old lady at the “Labor Temple", New 
York City, remarked: “I have lived ninety years just 
to hear this lecture." Hundreds have requested its 
publication and a few have contributed the means of 
bringing it out in its present form.’ Their assistance 
is gratefully acknowledged on page fifty-four. 


3 


4 


ASCENT OF MAN 


The greatest compliment, from his viewpoint, that 
can be paid to Mr. Ball is for an auditor to respond 
with “How true” or “‘How simple.” 

His lectures all deal with great, fundamental and 
vital truths, but none of them is so comprehensive in 
scope as this one herewith reproduced. It sums up 
in the briefest and most illuminating generalizations, 
the conclusions of modern science and sets them forth 
so simply that all feel they have been listening to 
something they already believed, understood and 
endorsed. 

In such a broad summary of world knowledge, to 
elaborate each point in detail is imposible. For the 
purpose in view, it is not necessary that it should deal 
with specific points. They may be left to later works, 
or to those with a taste for the immediate and the 
particular. 

The purpose of this lecture is to establish a dis¬ 
interested viewpoint; a way of looking at the universe 
and all it contains; in short a philosophy of life and 
a method of thinking. It is not meant for a detailed 
history of English civilization, a handbook on psy¬ 
chology or an encyclopaedia of science. It makes no 
pretension to accurate historic data, but should be 
read as one views an impressionistic picture. It sets 
forth as in a bas-relief, the great pivotal historic 
events and shows their relation to social changes, in 
their sequential order. 

When read in this way it equips the mind with a 
basic foundation for accurate thinking; it clears away 
the cob-webs of mysticism and clarifies the reader’s 
vision of the probable future of man and society. 

The material is as vital and applicable today as 
when it was first written. Dealing with universal 
principles, its interest and value will only decline 
when the mass of mankind shall have given up the 


ASCENT OF MAN 


5 


last vestige of superstitious faith in the fixity of things 
as they are. 

As introductory to this pamphlet, the “Ascent of 
Man” no words are more appropriate than those of 
Jean Sylvain Bailly, in his “Histoire de l’Astronomie 
Moderne”: 

“The human mind has been young; it was poor, 
but it has become rich; it was ignorant of what it 
now knows. Ideas have been successively gathered 
together, heaped up; they have mutually engendered 
each other, the one has led to the other. It remains 
therefore merely to rediscover this succession, to be¬ 
gin with the earliest ideas; the path is traced out; 
it is a journey that one may make again because it has 
already been made; the individual may now cover in 
the course of some hours’ reading, an extent of knowl¬ 
edge which it has cost the race long centuries to ac¬ 
quire.” 


Maude Ball. 


THE GEOLOGIC DAY 


BIRDS 






AGE OF THE EARTH 



HE probable age of the earth has led to a 
deal of speculation. Many men have ap¬ 
plied their minds diligently to the ques¬ 
tion and have given us various results, 
some of which we here submit. Arthur 
Holmes, a very eminent geologist and geographer of 
England, recently estimated the age of the earth at 
1,600,000,000 years; Thomas Henry Huxley, noted 
biologist of a generation ago*, held that the great 
numbers and varieties of animals pow on earth re¬ 
quired at least 400,000,000 years for their develop¬ 
ment; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet and 
philosopher, estimated the age of the earth at 300,000,- 
000 years; Lord Kelvin, eminent physicist of Eng¬ 
land, after much careful calculation finally decided 
upon 100,000,000 years as the probable figure; Lester 
Frank Ward, palaeobotanist at Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion estimated 72,000,000; Erasmus Darwin, kinsman to 
the famous biologist, 56,000,000 ; and Charles Walcott, 
palaeogeographer, 20,000,000; Ernest Haeckel, Ger¬ 
man biologist, told us that the" worTcT is 18,000,000 
years of age; and the Right Reverend John Lightfoot 
of England declared that God made the world on Fri¬ 


day, the twenty-third day of October, in the year 4004 
B. C. at nine o’clock in the morning. 

It is evident from all this, that there is a great 
variety of opinion on this vexed question. Since it is 
quite impossible for laymen, because of inadequate 
first hand information, to form even an approximate 
estimate, we are driven to adopt the conclusions of 
authorities. And since these experts disagree, we 
shall compromise on 72,000,000 years, the figures used 
by Ward. 

It is not that these figures are necessarily ac¬ 
curate, but to give a comparative idea of different 
periods in the world’s history, they are as reliable as 
any other, and for our purpose can be easily manipu¬ 
lated. 





THE GEOLOGIC DAY 

Let us suppose that the world is but one day old. 
Let us imagine if we can, that the world swung out 
into space at twelve o’clock of a given day and has 
lasted till twelve o’clock of the same night. Accord¬ 
ingly, our twelve hour dial represents 72,000,000 years 
compressed into twelve hours. This twelve hour 
period we may call the Geologic Day. The age thus 
represented has lasted from the beginning of the earth 
to the present time. 

Each hour on our clock, then, represents 6,000,000 
years. Each minute on the dial, 100,000 years. The 
horse, for example, has been on earth 500,000 years or 
five minutes by our clock. The whole archaean period 
of 18,000,000 years occupies three hours on the dial. 
The silurian period of 6,000,000 years is represented 
by one hour of geologic time. The jurassic, a period 
of 3,000,000 years, by thirty minutes. Each second on 
the clock represents approximately 1,500 years. 

Menes, who was King of Egypt in the year 5510 
B. C., and Wilhelm Hohenzollern, who was Emperor 
of Germany in the year 1914 A. D., were separated by 
approximately 7500 years, or five seconds of the Geo-r 
logic Day. It is reported that Adam’s attention was 
called to the apple in the Garden of Eden about the 
year 4004 B. C., and it is also reported that Newton by 
reflecting on a falling apple, discovered the principle 
of gravitation in the year 1665 A. D. From the time 
that Adam ate the apple till the apple hit Newton on 
the head was four seconds on our clock. We have 
been told that the Tower of Babel was built about 
the year 3500 B. C., and we know that the Woolworth 
Building was erected early in the XX. century A. D. 
The time between these two great events in building 
construction is represented on our clock by three sec¬ 
onds of time. From the Battle of Jericho to the Bat¬ 
tle of the Marne was two seconds; from the “Ten 


8 


ASCENT OF MAN 


9 


Points’ of Moses to the “Fourteen Points” of Wilson 
was two seconds; from the birth of Jesus Christ to 
the death of Martin Luther was one second; from 
the invention of gunpowder to the introduction of 
poison gas was a half second; and from the Crusades 
to Coxey’s Army was a half second. 

If we put together all that has been discovered 
about astronomy, we must assume that there was a 
time in the history of the earth when it was a whirl¬ 
ing mass of nebulous matter, very similar in appear¬ 
ance to the Milky Way, and that it gradually cooled 
from an intense white heat to yellow, then red. This 
age of the red heat might be called the fire or pyrotic 
age. The heat rising from the earth against the cold 
of space caused fluids in the atmosphere to condense 
and to come down as rain. The rain, in turn descend¬ 
ing on the fire, further cooled the mass. This war¬ 
fare between Vulcan, the Fire God, and Neptune, the 
Water God, we have reason to believe, raged for a 
half million years. By two on our clock, the outer 
layer of the earth was a mass of boiling water, and 
as the temperature continued to lower, forms of life 
began to appear, such as the protozoa, a one celled 
animal; and the porifera, or hydra. By four o’clock 
the sea was “swarming with swarmers”, including 
amphioxidae and the fishes. In this connection it is well 
to remember that one of the characters that distinguish 
a fish is that he is a water breather, direct contact with the 
air being fatal to him. 

By five-thirty, the amphibians began to come and 
to get a foothold on such islands as had at that time 
appeared above the surface of the water. Amphibians 
when first hatched breathe water but later become air 
breathers. They mark the extension of life from the 
water to the land. 

At seven o’clock, the reptiles, which are air 
breathers, appeared. At nine o’clock the birds were 


10 


ASCENT OF MAN 


flying about, and at eleven o’clock, or when the earth 
was 66,000,000 years of age, the mammals or fur¬ 
bearing animals began to come. At three minutes be¬ 
fore twelve, just in time for dinner, came man; order 
mammalia; genus homo; primate; only animal dis¬ 
tinguished by a fondness for gazing in the mirror. 
From the standpoint of the earth’s history man has 
been here but a very short while, a period of 300,000 
years or so; and our scientists infer that he will be 
here for perhaps another 12,000,000 years. That is, 
he may be expected to survive until two o’clock of 
another day. 

It is interesting to note in passing that the meth¬ 
ods by which the age of the earth has been gauged, 
include calculations as to the work of denudation of 
the valleys by the rivers; the salinity of the oceans, 
sedimentation, radio-activity, thermal energy of the 
sun, and of the earth and the radio-active minerals and 
their ages. 

HUMAN RACE STILL IN INFANCY 

Man is the newest product of nature, the latest 
arrival on earth. He has been here but a brief period 
and is as yet in his infancy. Potentially his entire 
career is before him, and if we are sometimes disposed 
to be impatient with his shortcomings, we should re¬ 
member that historically he is not yet ready for long 
trousers. For the time that he has been on earth he 
has accomplished wonders. He is the only product 
of nature that has even attempted the conquest of 
natural forces or has modified his environment in any 
appreciable degree. 

A scientist of Chicago University has predicted 
that the men who will be living here twelve million 
years hence, will • have accumulated such stores of 
knowledge that they will look upon us of the XX. 
century much the same as we look upon a toad. 


ASCENT OF MAN 11 

A WORLD VIEW 

We have now taken the first step in establishing 
a viewpoint from which to reason concerning the 
world, life, nature, man and society. One of our an¬ 
cient church fathers wrote a book entitled “Imago 
Mundi”; that is, he asked us to visualize the entire 
' universe; to form a comprehensive view of the world 
and its history. So, £>ur accompanying illustration 
is the first step in the establishment of an all embrac¬ 
ing view of the world in its relation to time and 
change. 

Now having the objective world before the eye 
of our imagination we are in a position to seek a 
philosophical explanation or to make an examination 
of world phenomena; to outline in fact a philosophy 
of life. 

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 

Our second diagram illustrates what is known as 
the Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. This 
postulates that all things in the world and including 
the world itself have a beginning, a fulfillment and a 
period of decline; in short a history. According to 
this view, things are not permanent but are in a con¬ 
stant state of flux or change. To illustrate, let us re¬ 
flect for a moment upon a human life. A man is born 
into the world as an infant; he has his childish trou¬ 
bles, cries over them; eats a peck or two of dirt; cuts 
his teeth; plays marbles and baseball; runs around 
with the girls; marries; reproduces; acquires a few 
accomplishments, sins, diseases and dies. That is, 
jman has a history; for no two seconds of time is he 
exactly the same. 

But what is true of a man is true of other things. 
A house-fly also is born, comes to maturity and dies. 
This is equally true of a mouse, an elephant and a 
mosquito. A chicken is hatched out of the egg, grows 


DIALECTICAL 

MATER1ALIS M 

0 


APOGEE 



BIRTH 


DEATH 




ASCENT OF MAN 


13 


feathers, lays a few eggs at a dollar a dozen, and 
passes into a feather duster. 

What is true of an individual is also true of man 
collectively. It applies to the population of the city 
in which you live. Every day new beings are ushered 
in; every day some pass away; the population is con¬ 
stantly varying. Your city is a different city today 
than yesterday and tomorrow it will be still different. 
It has a history. 

Dialectical Materialism applies not only to all 
living things, hut to inanimate things, such as rail¬ 
ways and street cars. Every day the old cars are 
thrown away and are replaced by new ones; every 
day old rails are taken out; old men are discharged 
and young men employed in their place; new methods 
are introduced and old methods discarded. In the 
Car Men’s Auditorium in Chicago is a series of wall 
decorations representing the history of street car 
transportation. First is shown the horse-car; then 
the cable-car; then the electric-car; and finally, the 
latest introduction, the two-car train. 

Time was when our ancestors in going from place 
to place, went on foot; later they rode in an oxcart; 
then in a carriage drawn by horses; then came the 
railway train with its palace coaches; and it is very 
probable that our grand children will look down upon 
us from the dizzy height of an aeroplane. That is, 
transportation has a history. 

But what is true of man and his devices and im¬ 
plements is also true of stars, worlds, planets and 
moons. Solar systems have an origin, a development 
and a dissolution. The moon, once intensely hot, has 
now cooled to 1500 degrees below zero. The sun is 
cooling gradually and we have every reason to infer 
that in some vague and indefinite future time, the 
earth will be as cold and lifeless as the moon. 


14 


ASCENT OF MAN 


All matter and energy are in a constant state of 
flux or change. The elements embraced under the 
science of chemistry are being slowly transformed 
from a higher to a lower form; all manifestations of 
life are undergoing change. Even the prevailing ideas, 
thoughts and opinions of man change from moment 
to moment. All his institutions have a beginning, a 
period of development and a period of decline and 
decay. Change is the one constant, universal mani¬ 
festation. This applies to all things, from a glow 
worm to a star; from dust to diamonds; from a daisy 
to a sun; from a simian to a savant. The Philosophy 
of Dialectical Materialism applies to small things as 
well as to the great and to the great no less than to 
the small. 

The microbe lives but a single hour; but in that 
hour it is born, rises to maturity, grows whiskers and 
dies of old age. The honeybee lives but six weeks, 
but in that time it wears out its wings and gives up its 
life. For a grain of wheat the three stages of trans¬ 
formation require months. For animals it takes 
years; in the lower forms of animal life, perhaps a 
score; in the higher, three, four, five scores. In the 
case of nations, peoples, societies, governments, it 
takes thousands of years. W. M. Flinders Petrie 
F. R. S. has been so bold as to say that their average 
duration is 1,500 years. In the case of worlds, suns 
and stars, the changes take millions of years. But 
whether it is the amoeba, the smallest visible living 
thing, or the great orb that lights the day, each thing 
has a history; each is born out of something else; 
grows into something greater and more wonderful; 
and in turn gives way to something still more 
marvelous. 

Theodore Dreiser, able American novelist, writes 
concerning this universal law of change thus: “The 
old or unyielding die or crumble; the unwitting young 


ASCENT OF MAN 


15 


arise to take their places. By this same thing which 
brings man into being is he ended before he becomes 
inelastic and unpliable. Indeed, Nature constantly 
replaces her handiwork, quite as in the case of the 
leaves on the trees, creating newer, greener, sappier 
things. This is just as true of religions, theories, arts 
and philosophies as it is of animals, races and indi¬ 
viduals. Nothing is fixed. The most convincing and 
stable thing that you know may well bear inquiring 
scrutiny, even this law of change. Out of the well 
springs of the deep what may not arise?” 

Socrates, an inquisitive old man about town in 
ancient Athens, with an annoying habit of prying into 
everybody’s business, was the inventor of the Dia¬ 
lectic. That is, he saw the variations in things and 
realized that all things had contradictory aspects. So 
he reasoned that if there is any truth to be had it can 
be best comprehended by looking at its several con¬ 
tradictory aspects. This method of reasoning is called 
Dialectics because it considers the contradictions that 
exist in things. 

Materialism is that philosophy which regards all 
the facts in the universe as explainable in terms of 
matter and motion. During the long history of phil¬ 
osophy there have been many schools of Materialism, 
those of the French and the English being the most 
notable. And whatever man has succeeded in accom¬ 
plishing while on earth has been largely due to a 
materialistic philosophy or the willingness to look 
reality in the face. Unfortunately all the materialistic 
philosophies have viewed the world from its static, 
rather than its dynamic aspect. Materialism was 
based on reality but it viewed reality standing still as 
it were. In the last quarter of the XIX. century, 
Frederick Engels, a German philosopher, conceived 
that both Socratic philosophy with its contradictions 
and French Materialism with its hard headed realism 


16 


ASCENT OF MAN 


contained some elements of a basic philosophy that 
would really explain the universe. So Engels took 
the Dialectic by one hand and Materialism by the 
other and performed a marriage ceremony. He united 
then into one philosophy and named it Dialectical 
Materialism. This philosophy postulates the univer¬ 
sality of change. It is the philosophy of philosophy. 

DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 

The accompanying diagram represents an appli¬ 
cation of the principle of Dialectical Materialism 
(dealt with in the preceding section) to successive so¬ 
cial changes; that is it illustrates the three stages; the 
beginning, development and decay of six distinct so¬ 
cial organizations since man has been on earth. It 
shows how in turn, each grew out of the preceding, 
retaining what was of utility and had survival value; 
discarding what no longer served mankind. It shows 
that in each of these changes or revolutions the deter¬ 
mining factor was some discovery which gave man a 
greater mastery over natural forces, a greater knowl¬ 
edge of his environment and an increasing degree of 
intellectual freedom. 

By referring back to our section on the Geologic 
Day, we recall that when man first appeared on earth, 
there was no bread and butter; no pork-chops or deli¬ 
cacies such as we now have; no guns; no bows and 
arrows; no battle ships; not even a stone hatchet for 
self defence against other savage men or wild ani¬ 
mals ; there was for him no protection from the un¬ 
tamed forces of nature, such as lightning, cold, heat 
or rain; no houses, no stoves; no electric lights; not 
even a tallow candle to dispel the darkness. There 
were no jails or penitentiaries to confine his enemies; 
there was no dictionary, no written or spoken lan¬ 
guage to communicate or record ideas; no preachers, 
teachers, editors or orators to instruct him; no fine 
churches or wise universities to lead or mislead him. 



THE DEVELOPMENT 
OF SOCIETY 


INDUSTRIAL 
AGRARIAN 
PASTORAL 
HUNTING 


MIGRATORY 


ARBOREAL 




18 


ASCENT OF MAN 


Man was a naked savage, with only his two hands 
and five senses, to aid him in conquering the world. 
The animals were here before man came upon the 
scene. They were large and hungry and ferocious. 
Some were as strong as elephants, some as aggressive 
as lions and hyenas, others that could fight like goril¬ 
las. Some of them had better eyes than man's; some 
had better ears; a keener sense of smell; better loco¬ 
motion; better weapons of offense and defence. 

ARBOREAL SOCIETY 

When man arrived he was ushered into a hostile 
world. The most pressing problem was one of pre¬ 
serving his life. Thus he was driven by necessity to 
take advantage of such opportunities as nature af¬ 
forded him. It is easy to conceive' that under such 
circumstances, man could only have survived, in or 
among the trees. In the trees the hosts of his ene¬ 
mies were reduced by a considerable percentage. The 
first society, therefore, we may call a “tree" or “Ar¬ 
boreal" society. 

In the tree man must have felt some sense of 
security, and growing power. It became possible for 
him to set up certain rules and regulations of con¬ 
duct; this was the beginning of what later developed 
into the social institutions of language, religion, gov¬ 
ernment, marriage and property. 

We have seen that man’s mode of living was 
determined by his material environment. His food and 
shelter were of course dependent upon his surround¬ 
ings. We are now to examine his attitude of mind 
toward his surroundings, and in this we trace the be¬ 
ginnings of religion, government, family and philos¬ 
ophy. 

Since safety was found in the trees and dangers 
lurked beneath them, the idea of the tree became in 
man’s mind associated with protection and safety. 


ASCENT OF MAN 


19 


His idea of what was good was associated with what 
came from the benevolent sunlight, air and warmth 
of the sky above; and his idea of what was evil grew 
out of his fear of the animals that walked or crawled 
on the earth, and of other dangers beneath them. To 
this day man associates the idea of a heaven, with 
some place “up above” and a hell with some place be¬ 
low. 

The tree was his protection; it furnished him nuts 
and fruits for food; its branches shielded him from the 
sun’s rays and from rain; its leaves trembling in the 
wind suggested to his groping mind, life, intelligence 
and independent action. In fact, he ascribed to the 
tree the characters of a sentient being, a creature 
whose power he could not fathom and whose good 
will he must obtain and keep. He thus became a tree 
worshipper. 

His rudimentary education began with the neces¬ 
sity for evading his enemies. Not being their equal in 
strength or keenness of perception, he was dependent 
upon his agility in escaping danger. He learned to 
leap stealthily and to hide among the leaves; to swing 
from branch to branch; to detect the various signals of 
danger from other animals and to elude them. This 
information he communicated to the young. Thus 
tradition was instituted among men, as it had origi¬ 
nated among mammals with the first attempts of the 
mother to warn the young of danger and to escape 
from harm. 

Primitive man’s mating instincts were gratified 
by seizing a wife and dragging her away to a cocoa- 
nut tree. Since each individual made his own marriage 
laws to suit himself, each no doubt had as many wives 
as he could defend and supply with cocoanuts. 

In the forest where Arboreal man lived, were 
many old dead tree trunks and branches. It not in¬ 
frequently happened that a tree trunk was struck by 


20 


ASCENT OF MAN 


lightning and ignited. Possibly, when this first oc¬ 
curred, it occasioned him great fright, but in due 
course of time, he became accustomed to the phenome¬ 
non. Being curious, he began to study this remarkable 
“animal” that devoured wood. He noticed with in¬ 
terest that the intense light and heat which it emitted, 
frightened the other animals away. 

MIGRATORY SOCIETY 

In coure of time one young tree dweller, more ob¬ 
serving, more daring or inquisitive than the others; 
or having more leisure to speculate; or being more 
advantageously situated for observation, discovered 
that by coming to the ground and gathering the burn¬ 
ing twigs or branches he could surround himself with 
them and remain in comparative security, temporarily 
safe from the more fearful and less intelligent ani¬ 
mals. 

Upon making this discovery he communicated it 
to his friends with considerable egoistic delight; 
whereupon, they set upon him with derision calling 
him hard names and making disparaging reference to 
his mentality. The more zealous tree worshippers 
accused him of heresy and of offence against the tree 
god. Others declared this bold and audacious in¬ 
novation would break up the home, destroy the gov¬ 
ernment, incite riot and rebellion. Others lamented 
that it would corrupt the youth of treedom and bring 
sorrow and disgrace to the respectable elders of the 
group. 

We can well imagine these discouragements made 
him “a little warm but not at all astonished.” Seeing 
that no disastrous results were visited upon him be¬ 
cause of his bold bad conduct, one by one the undesir¬ 
ables and a few of the younger and more venturesome 
joined him in his defiance of established custom and 
some of them boldly forsook the home and traditions 


ASCENT OF MAN 


21 


of their fathers and took up a permanent though haz¬ 
ardous existence on the ground. This period of society 
lasted for about 150,000 years, or one and one-half 
minutes of the Geologic Day. But the old men who 
clung fearfully to the old customs; the stand-patters 
who remained in the trees eventually died of old age. 

The discovery of fire, in time freed man from the 
restraints of tree life and was his first great achieve¬ 
ment. It changed the prevailing religion; it changed 
the government; the education and the customs of 
living. It affected the language by the addition of new 
terms. 

From having to subsist entirely upon raw foods, 
such as insects, honey, nuts and fruits, found in the 
trees, man in the new society was free to leave the 
forests to go into colder climates, and to travel up the 
streams for clams and fish; he would swim under the 
water and grab the ducks, pulling them under and 
breaking their necks. He now had a far wider range 
in procuring his food and exploring the world about 
him. 

From a tree worshipper he now became a wor¬ 
shipper of fire. The fire appeared to him to represent 
all that was most powerful and most essential to his 
welfare; it seemed to him a living thing; to be gov¬ 
erned by its own caprice and to visit vengeance and 
pain or to dispense benign warmth and protection at 
will. He began to make psalms and render worship 
to the capricious and powerful god of fire. He pro¬ 
pitiated the angry fire god by human sacrifices; he 
set slaves to tend the sacred fire, and killed them if 
they let the sacred fire go out. 

The new existence brought new necessities in re¬ 
lation to education and association between man and 
man. Some new system of regulations or laws of con¬ 
duct must have grown up around the making and 
tending of the fire, which may be compared to a primi- 


22 


ASCENT OF MAN 


tive or rudimentary governmental institution. Thus 
did the discovery of fire completely revolutionize 
“society” from its base to its superstructure. 

Out of the tree society grew a migratory society. 
Man now traveled with the seasons and the food 
supply. He adopted a migratory religion, migratory 
politics and a migratory family life. Although his 
marriage institution was modified somewhat, he still 
retained as many wives as he could manage and de¬ 
fend. He lived in this migratory society for about 
60,000 years or thirty-six seconds on our clock. 

When this society came to its full development 
and the population was pressing against the limited 
food supply, an agitator appeared. He, like his prede¬ 
cessor, the discoverer of fire, was one more fortunately 
situated or slightly more observing than his fellows 
and happening to note that a falling stone frightened 
away the animals, he learned somehow to fit a stone 
to a haft and to hurl it in such manner as to throw it 
a distance and to kill animals two or three times 
his own size and strength. In this remarkable dis¬ 
covery he got action at a distance. 

Manlike, being enthusiastic over his discovery and 
indiscreet in his speech, he proclaimed his achieve¬ 
ment triumphantly; whereupon, “just the same as be¬ 
fore,” the old men set upon him with derision and 
condemnation: 

“In the first place,” said the sages; “the thing 
cannot be done, 

And, second, if it could be it would not be any 
fun. 

And third and most conclusive and admitting 
no reply, 

You will have to change your nature. We 
should like to see you try.” 


ASCENT OF MAN 23 

HUNTING SOCIETY 

But all in due course of time, some of the more 
dauntless or progressive, took up his ideas and put 
them into practice. Those who preferred to go on in 
the ways of their forefathers, were unable to keep up, 
in the struggle for existence; they were left behind in 
the race; and finally died out. The young, vigorous 
and ambitious ones carried forward all that was good 
and practical in the preceding societies. 

Mankind here began living in a Hunting society. 
This caused a transformation of all of his institutions; 
he developed a hunter’s vocabulary, a hunter’s psy¬ 
chology; a hunter’s government, a hunter’s ethical 
code or system of conduct; from a worshipper of fire, 
he became a worshipper of a “Mighty Chieftain” and 
when he died he went to the “happy hunting ground.” 
His stone hatchet was buried with him to aid his soul 
in the conflict with wild beasts of the spirit world. 
He now began to educate the youth in the art of hunt¬ 
ing. From being a refugee from nature’s forces, he 
now proceeded to carry on an aggressive warfare and 
to extend his dominion over the lower animals. 

If he wanted a wife he grabbed one by the hair, 
from a neighboring tribe and dragged her to his lair. 
Like his predecessors, the tree dweller and fire wor¬ 
shipper, he had as many wives as he could defend and 
master. 

He lived under these conditions for a period of 
20,000 years, or fifteen seconds on our clock. Aboreat 
society lasted for 150,000 years; Migratory society 
lasted for 60,000 years; Hunting society, for 20,000 
years. Each society required but one third of the time 
of the preceding, for its maturity and decline. Human 
progress is thus seen to be in the ratio of three to one. 


24 ASCENT OF MAN 

PASTORAL SOCIETY 

When the Hunting society had reached its high¬ 
est development, members of the society had acci¬ 
dentally discovered that the “wild animals” were not 
necessarily wild; that they were susceptible to educa¬ 
tion and domestication. One of the inventive geniuses 
among the men of that time made some daring experi¬ 
ments in this direction and meeting with some success 
he announced a startling theory. “It is not necessary,” 
he declared, “to kill the animals. It is a waste of effort 
to go about promiscuously destroying all these valu¬ 
able life forms. I can teach the dog to hunt, and the 
horse to fetch and carry. The cow, sheep and pig can 
be made to serve us and we should not forget the wild 
hen with her delicious eggs.” 

By this time the woman had tamed the man, and 
it is very probable that her success led her to suggest 
to the man that he could in turn tame the animals. “I 
will cut wild grass for the horse and my man will ride 
on his back when he goes hunting. I will feed grass 
to the cow and she will give the warm white milk to 
drink. I will feed the dog and he will be our true First 
Friend,” she said. 

“But just the same as before,” the conservatives 
in the society, the upholders of the old faith, the aged 
and the mental defectives;—those who had not suffi¬ 
cient power of mind and character to change the mo¬ 
mentum resisted the new ideas and finally perished 
with the old regime. The young, vigorous and ag¬ 
gressive element carried forward all that was good 
in the former order and transformed the institutions 
to meet the new requirements. They changed the re¬ 
ligions, the politics, the government, the education of 
the young. They modified the marriage customs and 
increased the vocabulary by many new terms. 

If one wishes to understand the economics of 
this society, one should read the Book of Job. In it 


ASCENT OF MAN 


25 


is written: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose 
name was Job;—His substance was seven thousand 
sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred 
yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very 
great household; so that this man was the greatest 
of all the men of the east.” The Supreme Being also 
passed through an evolutionary change; from a 
Mighty Chieftain, he became a Good Shepherd looking 
well after his flocks and herds on earth. The poet of 
this age sang: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall 
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pas¬ 
tures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.” 

The Arboreal man had as many wives as he could 
defend; the Migratory man had as many wives as he 
could master; the Hunter had as many as he could 
capture; and now we are up to King Solomon’s time. 
Just to show that he was the King, he had more wives 
than any body else; in all, seven hundred wives and 
three hundred “cucumber vines.” 

Early in the Pastoral society, there were no build¬ 
ings adequate to house the large herds and flocks that 
man had domesticated. So, he would place them in 
charge of a shepherd who, having time to spare, would 
lie on his back and watch the wheeling heavens above 
him. In his fancy, he traced pictures in the sky. To 
these he gave various names, as the “Ram”, the “Lion”, 
the “Twins”, the “Virgin”, the “Bull”, the “Fishes”, 
the “Scorpion.” If you wish to investigate the results 
of the shepherds musings, you need only turn to the 
first page of the almanac, patent medicine or other¬ 
wise ; there you will find represented the fantastic out¬ 
lines of those familiar things that he pictured in the 
sky. Thus was begun our science of astronomy, more 
than 8,500 years ago. 


26 


ASCENT OF MAN 
AGRARIAN SOCIETY 


For 8,000 years man lived in a Pastoral society; 
five seconds of the Geologic Day. But by and by cer¬ 
tain factions became discontented with the monotony 
and inactivity of the prevailing regime, and one day 
gathered in a little crowd on the hill side. Among 
them was the irrepressible rebel, ‘the man with the new 
i<lea. ,, He very probably spoke to them in this wise: 
“It is all very well that man has discovered how to 
use fire; it is good that he learned how to make and 
use the stone-hatchet; it is well that he discovered 
how to domesticate the animals; but I can do all this 
and something more, something greater than any of 
them. 

“My new discovery will solve all our problems 
and usher in the perfect paradise on earth. I can take 
a grain of barley and plant it in the ground. By giv¬ 
ing it careful attention for some two or three months, 
I can gather a hundred grains for every one that I 
plant. I can do this with wheat and corn and oats; I 
can domesticate the cereals and fruits of the earth, 
much as our ancestors domesticated the animals. 
What I can do, you also may do. If we wish, we may 
add a new source of food supply; may conquer one 
more dominion of nature. Now disease and plague 
and epidemic take away our live stock; when such 
calamities come upon us we should be able to make up 
our losses by a new food supply. The introduction of 
agriculture will increase our food supply and by the 
same token, increase the leisure of man; the era of 
peace and plenty will have arrived.” 

Unfortunately, for the speaker, he was more 
enthusiastic than discreet and “just the same as be¬ 
fore,” the hard heads met his eloquence with derision. 
They cried: “Stone him, crucify him, confine him 
under the hill. Kill him, he’s got brains. He is against 
religion; he is against the government; against mo- 


ASCENT OF MAN 


27 


rality; he wants to break up the home; he will corrupt 
the youth; he will bring down upon us the wrath of 
heaven. God made the earth as he wanted it made 
and he planted such things as he wished to grow, 
where he wanted them. To grow grains by planting 
seeds, it is necessary to break the ground; to break 
the ground is to break the law;—a sacrilege, a heinous 
crime. Besides, if man plants grains, it will be neces¬ 
sary to divide the land up into sections and parcel it 
over to individuals for their own private use. As you 
well know, man is so selfish and greedy that in a short 
while, some shrewd one will own the earth.” For 
some time, such arguments arrested progress. 

However, after much wrangling and dissention, 
mankind finally adopted the new idea and began a 
new society based on agriculture; this we may call the 
Agrarian society. When we view it from the stand¬ 
point of history, we find that it revolutionized all the 
institutions of the preceding order. To survive, these 
institutions had to be modified to suit the Agrarian life. 
The patriarchal government was transformed into a 
territorial; in place of polygamy was substituted 
monogamy. If man was to plant and reap a harvest 
it was necessary for him to possess the land. A pas¬ 
sion for privately owning the land developed and re¬ 
sulted in the institution of inheritance. In this way 
the children retained the patrimony of the father. 

But this presented the problem of the parentage 
of the children. For this, man adopted a very practical 
solution. That was for one man to marry one woman 
and permanently retain her as his wife. By this means 
only could he be reasonably sure as to which were his 
own children. His religion was also transformed. 
From a shepherd’s faith, he evolved an imperialistic 
religion and this in due course of time came to be 
known as Catholicism. 


28 


ASCENT OF MAN 


Men became landed proprietors, some owning vast 
estates, some small and some none at all. Man occu¬ 
pied a given position in a land owning hierarchy, and 
this hierarchy on earth was idealized into a hierarchy 
of souls in heaven. 

With the introduction of the Agrarian society, the 
young, vigorous and progressive were the leaders of 
opinion. Society went forward in leaps and bounds. 
Men began to travel; a new impetus was given to navi¬ 
gation ; the Mediterranean Sea was explored from 
Tyre to the Pillars of Hercules and from Amphiopolis 
to Carthage; great armies were mobilized to support 
great states and empires; man began to communicate 
his thoughts by the written word. He lived in the 
trees for 150,000 years; he led a migratory existence 
for 60,000 years; he was a hunter for 20,000 years; a 
shepherd for 8,000 years; he was a farmer for 3,000 
years. During that 3,000 years more was accom¬ 
plished than in the preceding 240,000 years. 

Thus again is illustrated the ratio of human prog¬ 
ress. Man’s advancement was not due to a bigger 
brain; not because he was better looking; more moral, 
patriotic or religious; not hereditary genius but down¬ 
right, hard cold facts in regard to nature and her laws 
enabled him to rise above restricting conditions and 
throw off the past. But the old conservatives who 
could see nothing but heresy and sacrilege in farming 
and navigation, and anarchy in the new customs and 
ideas stuck to their old shepherd institutions and per¬ 
ished with them. Nature in her kindness finally elimi¬ 
nated them as unfit for survival in the new era. 

In the transition nothing was lost to mankind that 
has utility. The ethics, religion, and politics of the 
former period were discarded as impedimenta; all that 
was practical, valuable and helpful under the new 
regime was retained; society lost nothing by the trans¬ 
formation, but only freed itself from the supersti- 


ASCENT OF MAN 


20 


tions of religion; incongruities of political forms; im¬ 
practicability in education; from obsolete customs. 
Even the language was transformed to meet the needs 
of the new interests, new activities and new ideas and 
ideals. 

Fire, which had been discovered thousands of 
years before, still had utility and was better controlled; 
the weapon was improved and elaborated; the domesti¬ 
cation of animals was more complete; more of them 
had been brought under man’s dominion than in the 
Pastoral age. But agriculture was the dominant occu¬ 
pation of the age and it colored every institution. 

In an Agrarian society many difficulties and in¬ 
conveniences presented themselves. A few examples 
will suffice. If a man wanted to know the hour of 
the day, he was obliged to look at the sun. He had 
no watches or clocks. On cloudy days or at night he 
had no way of determining the time. If he wanted 
a pair of stockings for his feet, there was no ten cent 
store where he could go to purchase them ; he must 
be on good terms with his grandmother because she 
knitted all the stockings, by hand with hard and tedi¬ 
ous labor. The same was true of shoes. Grandfather’s 
hand labor supplied them. They were not for sale, 
but for use. 

As the society matured, all activities increased and 
the wants and needs of the people increased accord¬ 
ingly. Some system of barter and exchange became 
necessary; and a class of tradesmen sprang up whose 
function it was to pass from one community to an¬ 
other and carry wares of one kind to exchange for an¬ 
other kind. But there were no free public roads as 
today. All the land was owned by the feudal baron 
who entrenched himself in the castle and controlled 
the highways. He owned not only the land but all 
that was attached to the land; he owned the teacher, 
the preacher, the philosophers, the government. Had 


30 


ASCENT OF MAN 


there been an Agrarian “Daily Times,” its editorial 
policy would have been dictated by the feudal baron 
and nothing would have been tolerated in its news 
columns or advertising pages, not strictly in agreement 
with his economic and political interests. 

He dictated public opinion and public policy. He 
controlled all institutions and activities because he was 
so situated that he could enforce his demands. Clad 
in his armour, and having in his hand the sword, own¬ 
ing his vast estates, he was a most efficient wielder of 
thought and opinion. He completely dominated his 
age and time. 

Owing to the inconveniences of this system of 
social organization and the tyranny of the feudal 
barons, some sections of the population congregated in 
towns and developed some particular industry. They 
soon began to trade with their neighbors. Ivory, silk, 
cotton, wheat, camphor, indigo and numerous other 
articles were carried from one locality to another. 
This was done by ships, by caravans and by individual 
men on horseback. The feudal baron lay in wait at 
the river mouth, along mountain roads, or the high¬ 
ways over the plains. Clad in his impenetrable 
armour, mounted on his valiant steed also clad in mail, 
with a safe refuge behind his castle walls, and with 
the government behind his audacity, whenever a cara¬ 
van or a trader approached, he boldly demanded a toll 
for the privilege of passing over his land. For his toll 
he was in a position to take whatever he desired. This 
was always the choicest, the best and the most valu¬ 
able and frequently the largest portion of the load the 
trader carried. The trader being unarmed, and un¬ 
protected by armour, not having the support of the 
government, was disposed to be noncombatant and 
compromising. He could only submit to the exactions 
as gracefully as possible. 


ASCENT OF MAN 


31 


As time passed, in spite of the greedy demands of 
the feudal lords, trade increased and the merchant 
class became very rich and prosperous. Much of this 
wealth was concentrated in the cities, which in time 
became very prosperous and powerful. Under the pro¬ 
tection of these cities were young men growing up who 
were sensitive to the difficulties and who sweated 
under the injustice and tyranny of such a system. By 
them thought was stimulated and restlessness became 
everywhere manifest. About this time, one bold youth 
startled the populace by announcing that it was not 
necessary to look at the sun, in order to tell time. He 
said that he could build a factory, and in that factory 
he could make a little round instrument, describing 
the journey of the earth around the sun, by means of 
which he could determine the time, whether by night 
or day; in fair or cloudy weather. 

Early in the Agrarian society, even Caius Julius 
Caesar was confronted with difficulties growing out 
of the problem of time. When Julius wanted to know 
the hour he had to send a slave down to the Roman 
Forum, to look at the sun-dial. When the slave re¬ 
turned to Julius he told him the exact time by the sun¬ 
dial. This accounts for the fact that Julius was always 
a half hour late. 

With the proposal of factory production, the old 
standpatters raised a howl against the innovation. 
Just the same as before, they denounced the youth 
as an anarchist. “He is against religion ! Against the 
government Put him in jail! Chain him in a 
dungeon! Send him to the galleys or burn him at the 
stake,” they cried. “He will break up the home; he is 
against private property; against morality; he will 
corrupt the youth. The fact is,” said they, “his ideas 
and conduct are altogether obnoxious and subversive” 
(for refined and cultured conservatives always talk like 
this). “Put him in jail,” and they did. 


32 


ASCENT OF MAN 


But another youth, more disposed to reflection, or 
perhaps more indolent than the rest, proposed to make 
a machine for knitting, which would produce more and 
better socks in a few hours than grandmother could 
knit in a lifetime. At this proposal there went up a 
howl that reverberated from Bagdad to London, from 
Thebes to Cologne. “What! Throw grandmother out 
of a job? Ingrate! Desecrator of the hearth! Dis¬ 
turber of the peace! Undesirable citizens! Excom¬ 
municate him ! Exile him! Put him to the galleys! 
Throw him in chains!” they cried and it was forth¬ 
with done. 

“But,” said another modest young enthusiast 
from Genoa, Italy, “the world is round. I can sail 
westward over the Atlantic and evade the feudal 
barons by making a new route to India. Give me 
ships and men and I will prove my contention.” Cried 
the standpatters the same as always, “This man Co¬ 
lombo is crazy. He’s a nut. It is absurd on the face 
of it. You have, only to look at the earth to see that 
it is quite flat.” And the boys and girls on the streets 
of Madrid pointed their fingers at their heads sig¬ 
nificantly as Christopher Columbus went by. 

Another disturbing upheaval was precipitated by 
one Martin Luther. This man had lived most of his 
life in the city, and had become accustomed to the 
habits and ways of the trading class, their trials, diffi¬ 
culties and tribulations. He became very much dis¬ 
satisfied with the feudal characteristics of the Catholic 
Church and quite innocently proposed some reforma¬ 
tions. The citizens of Wittenberg were one morning 
astonished to find nailed on the church door, a docu¬ 
ment, containing “ninety-five points,” challengeing the 
church practices of the time most offensive to his ideas 
of ethics and justice. These points dealt with indul¬ 
gences, masses, pilgrimages, purgatory and the head¬ 
ship of the Bishop of Rome. 


ASCENT OF MAN 


33 


The publication of Luther’s “Theses” brought him 
many sympathizers among the trading class of Ger¬ 
many and other countries. Since he had behind him 
the influence of the city population it was necessary 
to be very adroit in dealing with this upstart. Luther 
met opposition, but his ideas finally triumphed and 
thus was born the modern protestant church, based 
upon democratic rather than autocratic ideals. 

All these things served to break down the power 
of the feudal baron, who had been supported by the 
authority of the Pope of Rome. Luther’s influence 
among the trading class increased and his religion be¬ 
came the religion of the merchant or trading class, 
that we now know as the bourgeoisie. 

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 

But the most significant thing that happened in 
the Agrarian age was the discovery of the action of 
gun powder and its application to warfare. Said the 
chemist of the day: “We can take some saltpetre, 
some charcoal and some sulphur, mix them in certain 
proportions, and make a substance that when ignited 
will expand with tremendous rapidity and force. We 
can confine this behind a leaden bullet and the bullet 
will penetrate the armour of the feudal baron and 
shatter the walls of his castle.” So armed with his 
gun and bullets the trader marched triumphantly' 
against the feudal lords. Not only did the leaden 
bullet and the cannon ball penetrate their armour and 
shatter their castle walls, but they battered into ruins 
his religion, his politics, his morality, his government. 
By gunpowder he was led to entertain some doubt 
concerning the “fixity of institutions.” 

In place of the feudal baron’s psychology and 
dominant ideas, there grew up the institutions, prac¬ 
tices, ideas, customs, laws and government, education 
and religion of the trading class; far more democratic, 


34 


ASCENT OF MAN 


more tolerant, more in accord with progress of the 
majority of mankind. Now universities were builded, 
and men of science were encouraged on every hand. 
In order to carry on trade successfully, it was neces¬ 
sary that the great mass of men should be able to read 
and write, to add and substract; necessary that ocean 
navigation should be extended; that geographical 
knowledge should be widened. This required accurate 
knowledge of astronomical phenomena; of the expan¬ 
sion of gases; of the habits and habitats of animals: 
Even the peculiar characteristics of the outlanders 
and heathen were investigated and tolerated in the in¬ 
terest of trade. A knowledge of the heathen’s psychol¬ 
ogy was essential, if the trader was to cope with him 
in barter for a bracelet or an anklet. Some of the more 
forward looking merchants of the time conceived that 
a good capable missionary might be useful in helping 
to establish a market for chewing gum, whiskey and 
Bibles. 

The Agrarian society, or feudalism lasted for 
about 3,000 years, or two seconds of the Geologic Day. 
It passed out in England in the year 1688, and died in 
the streets of Paris in 1789. Gun powder came into 
existence with industrialism and has been its constant 
companion ever since. 

But the old conservatives clung to the customs 
of the preceding age. They were unable to adapt them¬ 
selves to the new conditions; they became reminiscent, 
anaemic and finally died. With them went the prevail¬ 
ing ideas of their society. Thus another great social 
organization had its origin, maturity, decline and 
decay; the trader, the bourgeois, the captain of in¬ 
dustry came to the fore with his cent per cent, stocks 
and bonds, bookkeepers, stenographers, efficiency sys¬ 
tems, profits and losses, newspapers, lyceums and 
pamphleteers, sewing societies and settlement houses 
for social uplift. 


ASCENT OF MAN 


35 


With the trader came the printing press, which 
extended knowledge to all classes of people. Hereto¬ 
fore, education had been the special privilege and pos¬ 
session of the nobility and the priestly classes. He 
liberalized the political institutions and gave the great 
mass of people participation in government; he in¬ 
augurated an era of free thought, free speech and free 
press; with him came all the modern methods of com¬ 
munication, such as the telephone, telegraph, railways, 
steamships; whereas prior to the day of the industrial¬ 
ist, the average man could not go farther than fifteen 
miles from home, it is now not uncommon for men to 
traverse the globe again and again. He broke down 
race prejudice, religious prejudice and to a large de¬ 
gree class prejudice. Another thing that he demon¬ 
strated was that there are other universes than ours; 
he extended his vision by the use of the telescope; he 
eliminated in a measure, time and space, by means of 
telephone and telegraph; extended his locomotion by 
the steam engine and later by electricity; he set up a 
greater harmony between science, religion and phil¬ 
osophy and was the chief means of freeing the world 
from intolerance. 

He did much to emancipate woman from tyran¬ 
nous customs. And best of all, to carry on capitalistic 
enterprise it was necessary to place responsibility, the 
result being to develop a great common people pos¬ 
sessed of knowledge, strength, courage, will power, 
insight, skill and initiative. 

He explored every nook and cranny of the world, 
and published all available information. Not satisfied 
with the boundaries of our own planet, he turned his 
telescope on other worlds and ferreted out their inner¬ 
most secrets. 

He drove the gods of his fathers from the realm 
of the stars, planets and suns. Law and order were 
evervwhere introduced under his magic sceptre; erst- 


36 


ASCENT OF MAN 


while guided by caprice along the course of their 
orbits, the planets now fell into step and pursued their 
orderly course without danger of collision. Comets, 
eclipses, earthquakes, lightning, volcanoes, geysers, 
tidal waves, yielded their terrors, to the industrialist’s 
tireless inquisition. Light, heat, sound, electricity, 
gravitation, the atom, and the electron gave up to him 
their secrets; and his enterprise and adventure dis¬ 
pelled the mysteries of sleep, insanity, dreams and 
other psychical phenomena; he drove out the medicine 
man with his incantations and mystic ceremonies and 
introduced sanitation and hygiene. By the improve¬ 
ment of artificial light, he lengthened his days to the 
amount of three months each year; as an innovator of 
labor saving devices, comforts, conveniences and lux¬ 
uries ; he outstripped anything ever dreamt of in pre¬ 
vious orders of society. 

He peopled the great continents, the islands and 
the caves; his ships dotted the seas from London to 
Melbourne and from New York to Hong Kong; he 
delved in the earth’s crust and brought up the mag¬ 
nificent treasures hidden there; he dived into the seas; 
he ascended the mountains, denuded the forests; 
spanned the rivers, navigated the air, and extracted 
from every department of nature the wealth and 
energy stored therein. 

He built great universities and museums and 
enriched them with treasures of art, science and liter¬ 
ature; he put a school on every hill and a newspaper 
in the hand of every man, woman and child. 

His ancestors had invented money but he made 
it the chief instrument of his magic. The dollar sign 
became in his hand the mystic wand by means of 
Avhich he completely transformed society. 

The ushering in of the Industrial society, com¬ 
monly called Capitalism brought with it a complete 


ASCENT OF MAN 


37 


revolution of government, education, religion, family 
life, ethics, art and literature. 

The first man was a tree worshipper, the second 
a fire worshipper, the third worshipped a mighty chief- 
tan, the fourth had a shepherd’s religion, the fifth the 
religion of the autocrat; the industrialist now pro¬ 
claimed a banker’s religion. His hymns and sermons 
and ceremonies were based on the concept of a rich 
traders’ kingdom with streets of gold and crowns of 
jewels; a land of eternal rest where the industrious 
would be freed from toil and the humble would have 
power; the poor would inherit the earth; the saved 
would enjoy vengeance over their persecutors and the 
obedient sit at the right hand of the Supreme Ruler. 

Factory production completely drove out hand 
labor, and material wealth was produced not for con¬ 
sumption but for profit. To produce for small cost, 
and dispose of for gain became the prevailing am¬ 
bition, the universal standard of life; to accumulate 
wealth became the prime incentive to all activity. 
Shrewdness and foresight were employed in determin¬ 
ing in advance men’s wants and needs; or in creating 
artificial needs in order to supply them at a profit: 
saving and hoarding became the mark of respecta¬ 
bility; and the amount of endurance, the stamp of an 
efficient employee. To take advantage of another 
man’s need or weaker position was the evidence of in¬ 
telligence and shrewd business judgment. 

The masters of the Industrial society in order to 
maintain their place had to resort to the most exra- 
ordinary measures. Some of their number conceived 
the new and original idea of making paper soled shoes 
and selling them for the price of leather. Others ma¬ 
chined peanut shells which they sold for breakfast 
food. A third introduced shoddy into the clothing 
business and his competitors seeing his success soon 
sophisticated all their products. In time, this method 


ASCENT OF MAN 


of sophistication of things became almost universal 
and one of the most destructive influences in the 
society. 

For the protection of his iniquities, the industrial¬ 
ist instituted graft in his politics, his religion, his 
education and his business enterprise. 

His machines were so productive and it took such 
a small percent of the population to produce for all 
that the result was that a great mass of unemployed 
grew up on one hand. They were the canker worms 
that gnawed at the vitals of society. On the other 
hand grew up a class of idle rich, parasites on the body 
politic and functioning to subject the restless and dis¬ 
satisfied elements in society by sophistry, pomp, and 
the paralyzing prestige of opulence and power. 

To maintain himself even in his destitute state, it 
became necessary for the competitive workingman to 
put’his children into industry, and this eventually made 
them his rivals in the struggle for higher wages and 
better working conditions. Under the stress of un¬ 
employment, the most efficient and capable were re¬ 
duced to the standard of the inefficient, the defectives 
and the indigent. 

But the greatest problem that he was called upon 
to face was the great industrial wars, or strikes that 
shook society from center to circumference with in¬ 
creasing rapidity and violence. Larger and larger 
groups of men were brought into the vortex of these 
disturbing crises. 

So, we find that industrialism like preceding social 
orders, had its origin, its great period of marvelous 
development and growth; but within that order, just 
the same as before, were the seeds of its own dissolu¬ 
tion and decline. With the increasing misery of the 
poor, the concentration of wealth, the gradual lower¬ 
ing of the standard of living for all, the reduction of 
the well-to-do middle classes and professionals to a 


ASCENT OF MAN 


39 


lower standard of living, the foundation of the capital¬ 
istic institutions began to weaken and to tremble. 

No society can maintain itself after it ceases to 
provide for the welfare of the population. None ever 
has. 

Out of the crumbling institutions of capitalism, 
a new age is emerging; society is now in the throes 
of labor pains. It is about to give birth to a new 
order. The agitator is now in our midst. He says in 
substance: “It is all very well that the first man in¬ 
vented fire; that the second discovered the stone 
hatchet; the third domesticated the animals; the 
fourth introduced agriculture; and the industrialist in¬ 
troduced production by machinery. These things have 
been good in their time. We need not give up any 
of them that still serve us collectively. 

“But, it is not enough that one man or group of 
men should own and control what all must have, in 
order to live decently. We do not know how the coal 
came to be in the ground, but we are satisfied that no 
man put it there with his hands. We all use coal, but 
in order to procure it, we are obliged to pay some man 
for that privilege. This man did not put the coal in 
the ground, nor does he dig the coal out of the ground. 
All he does is own it. We have to pay him for it, 
only because we allow him the privilege of owning it. 
His ownership adds nothing to the value of the coal; 
it adds a tremendous burden to our already heavy 
load. He takes advantage of our needs and like the 
feudal baron he sanctions his power by the authority 
given him through a government no longer representa¬ 
tive of our needs. 

“Suppose some man were to invent a machine by 
means of which he could extract the oxygen from the 
atmosphere and compress it into a tank much the 
same as is done with coal gas; some industrialist with 
his millions of dollars and with his capitalistic vision 


40 


ASCENT OF MAN 


and shrewdness would buy the machine, and deny us 
the right to use the oxygen except upon his own con¬ 
ditions. He would put a hose on your nose, a meter 
on your trousers leg and every time you wanted a 
breath of fresh air you would have to drop a nickel in 
the slot. 

“And in this he would be clearly within his rights 
according to the law as written in the statute books 
and according to the customs of the time. When a 
man of substance and of wealth acquired by business 
acumen, invests capital in a modern improved ma¬ 
chine, duly patented in his name, it is his private prop¬ 
erty to be used by others only on terms dictated by 
himself. He has done the same with the forests, with 
the coal in the ground; the same with the mineral oil, 
and with all the social inventions of mankind. 

“Should any of you become dissatisfied with this 
neat and useful arrangement and should take your 
complaint to a court of law, the judge and jury would 
be unanimous against you, because judges and juries 
are nothing if they are not logical and consistent. 

“Since you insist it is ethical that we should col¬ 
lectively own and use the air and sunlight; I say to 
you that it is equally appropriate that we should col¬ 
lectively own the mines, the forests, the railroads, the 
street-car systems, the factories, and every other de¬ 
vice, socially produced, that serves a social need. 

“You ask if this is practical. I say we have already 
many socialized institutions, many enterprises and 
devices, socially owned and operated for our own com¬ 
mon good. Among them are the streets; it required capi¬ 
tal to build the street, it requires capital to maintain 
the sidewalk, yet any may use the sidewalk without 
money and without price. It does not require a man 
to own it. If John D. Goldenastor owned the sidewalk 
he would have a fare collector on every corner and if 


ASCENT OF MAN 


41 


you wished to cross the street you would have to have 
your transfer punched. 

“If we can own and operate a sidewalk socially, 
if we can own and operate a Panama Canal, if we can 
own and operate a post office, a fire department, a 
school house, public parks and bathing beaches, armies 
and navies, penitentiaries, jails and court houses, in 
the interest of the owning class, we can own and oper¬ 
ate for our common good, the street car lines, the rail¬ 
roads, the shoe factories, the hat factories and the 
steamship lines, the mines, the bread factories and 
the chewing gum factories.” 

“What? You stand for public ownership of tooth 
brushes, public ownership of handkerchiefs, public 
ownership of wives, public ownership of socks ?” ob¬ 
jected one who stood on the fringe of the crowd. 

But the agitator answered: “Had you listened 
carefully to what I said you would have noticed that 
I particularly referred to socially owning those things 
which we socially use. That is, those things that we 
use together, we should own together; and those 
things which we use privately, should be privately 
owned. 

“We use the sidewalk socially, and we socially 
own it. But when we use the street car it is quite a 
different proposition. We use the street car socially, 
but we allow some man to own it privately. It is not 
operated by us for our common comfort and con¬ 
venience, but primarily for private profit. We use it 
only under conditions which are defined by the owner. 
We comply with those terms or we walk, if this is 
what you mean by individual freedom.” 

These arguments being irrefutable and discom¬ 
fiting, the conservative and honorable gentlemen 
answered with derision and anger. “Down with him,” 
they cried, as before. “He is a disturber of the peace; 
he is against the government; against law and order; 


42 


ASCENT OF MAN 


he wants to break up the home, and the old political 
parties; he wants free love, free booze and a care free 
life. He is a lazy, disgruntled member of society, too 
indolent to hustle for himself as our money lords have 
done, in buying up the nation’s resources. He is in¬ 
efficient, ignorant and uncultured. He should quit 
talking and go to work. If he doesn’t like this country 
let him go back to where he came from. If he per¬ 
sists, put him in jail, stone him, lynch him, deport 
him,” 

And it was done. 

Capitalism is now in the 577th year of its age. 
Man lived in the trees for 150,000 years; he lived a 
migratory existence for 60,000 years; he was a hunter 
for 20,000 years; a shepherd 8,000 years; an agricul¬ 
turist for 3,000 yearsv; he has been an industrialist for 
500 years. Capitalism is now growing old; fast tot¬ 
tering to destruction. Out of the ruins arises the new 
society, holding fast to all real benefits contributed by 
past ages; yielding nothing that serves mankind, but 
looking forward to greater and better opportunities 
for all. 

‘‘You may call it by any name you wish”, says 
our agitator. But let us provisionally give it a name 
because it will introduce a civilization where all men 
will have access to all the knowledge and opportuni¬ 
ties of their time, not only of past civilizations but of 
those that are still to come. Provisionally, let us call 
the new society Pananthropy, until a better name is 
suggested. 

The new society must displace competition with 
co-operation; must provide for the youth; must 
emancipate women from economic slavery; must free 
the talents and genius of the masses from the repress¬ 
ing influences of fear, worry, anxiety, discouragement 
and want; must socialize knowledge; it must pass 


ASCENT OF MAN 


43 


from the administration of people to the administra¬ 
tion of things; from a man-handling society to a thing 
handling society; from a class society to a human 
society. 

MODERN SOCIETY 

Our illustration on the following page presents an 
economic and psychological cross-sectional view of 
modern society. First, we have an inverted triangle 
which is marked with the familiar This dollar 

sign represents the wealth of the world. It should 
suggest to us all the buildings in the world; all the 
railroads; all the steamships; all the automobiles; 
all the hats; all the coats; all the food and all the 
money. It represents the accumulated wealth of the 
world. While we look at this, we should think of all 
the wealth in England, in Germany, in France; in 
Japan and in the United States. There was a time, 
as we have seen, when there was no wealth in the 
world; no pavements; no pianos; no cook stoves; no 
electric lights. That was before man came. When 
man came upon earth, he began to make things; that 
is, he began to produce wealth ; to adjust the resources 
of the world to suit his convenience. 

All wealth has one common charactertistic. 
Typewriters, books, umbrellas and harvesting ma¬ 
chines, are all alike in one particular; that is, they are 
made by men who work with their hands. All wealth 
is the product of labor. The tree is not wealth until 
man has applied his labor in making it into chairs, 
tables, or some other article.of use or beauty. The 
water in the river is of no value until it is bridged or 
dammed; until it supports a boat made by man’s la¬ 
bor; until it is transported by pipes or vessels or 
pumping stations, for use. A tree in the forest, a 
fish in the sea, coal in the ground, have no economic 
value until the the labor of man has been applied to 
transform or transport them. 


MODERN SOCIETY 



PHYSICAL ARM OF THE STATE 
DOMINANT THOUGHT OF THE STATE 








ASCENT OF MAN 


45 


But wealth is produced not alone by men work¬ 
ing with their hands; it must have social utility, social 
values. When there were no men here, there was no 
wealth here. When there were hundreds of men here 
there was hundreds of wealth; thousands of men made 
thousands of wealth; millions of men, millions of 
wealth and now that there are billions of men there 
are billions of wealth. 

But all men who produce wealth with their hands, 
have also brains. Brains without hands are unpro¬ 
ductive. At the left of our picture, we have a struc¬ 
tural steel worker. He has risked his life and em¬ 
ployed his time and energies to construct something 
of great use and beauty. He has not only hands, but 
brains, nerve, character and feelings. But this man 
represents all the workers in all lines of endeavor. 
He stands for the printers, the coal miners, the 
builders, the railroad workers, the machinists, the 
farmers, the teachers—all who do useful work of hand 
or brain. 

They produce the wealth of the world. They 
make the world comfortable, beautiful and convenient, 
a decent and fit place in which to live. They create 
all values; they do everything but have nothing above 
maintenance. They make all the silks and all the 
satins and all the woolens and all the velvets, batten- 
berg and fine linens; but they wear copper riveted 
overalls; they make all the musical instruments, but 
have none of their own. They build all the jails and 
penitentiaries, and mostly fill them. They make all 
the books, and the fine libraries and they read little 
besides the baseball news; they build all the fine man¬ 
sions and live in the shacks. 

The figure at the right side of the illustration rep¬ 
resents the individual who owns the wealth, but pro¬ 
duces none of it. All that he does to the wealth is 
own it. If he does any useful work, whatever, he 


46 


ASCENT OF MAN 


belongs on the other side of the picture. This man 
does nothing and has much; he lives without work; 
the other works without “living.” 

The line on the left of the triangle marks off the 
portion of the world’s wealth that goes to the support 
of the working man. The remainder of the triangle 
is the share retained by the owner, to cover operating 
expenses, to replace the machinery of production, to 
support the government, to maintain his social posi¬ 
tion, to stimulate public spirit. What is left goes 
down on the books as profit. And here is the rub. 

Out of his portion of the wealth, he pays the ex¬ 
penses of armies, navies, police, jails, and jail keepers; 
editors, preachers, teachers; he contributes heavily to 
charity and social uplift, he donates large sums to the 
campaign fund and pays wages to all unproductive 
workers, including salesmen, advertisers, “realtors” 
and missionaries. 

When all these expenses are paid, what is left, 
reverts not to the men who produced it, but to the 
man who owns the machine on which they produced 
it. It is over this margin of profit that the conflict be¬ 
tween workers and owners centers. It is over this 
portion of wealth that strikes are declared, that lock¬ 
outs and boycotts cause such frequent recurring dis¬ 
turbances in society, affecting an ever increasing part 
of the population. 

Since the owner pays the taxes out of his share, 
that is he pays the salaries of the government officials, 
the soldier and the police, he dictates to them and 
they serve him faithfully. Like the feudal baron, he 
exacts whatever demand he sees fit, and it is in every 
case all that the worker makes, except enough to sus¬ 
tain his life, and reproduce his kind. The variations 
in wage are just sufficient to allow the worker to live 
according to the standard that is essential to his 


ASCENT OF MAN 


47 


efficiency. This is the nation’s “strong arm” or “man¬ 
handling-” function of the state. 

When the wealth producers organize into unions 
and get an effective weapon for pushing over the 
wages line, they are opposed by the Physical Arm of 
the State, by the policemen’s club, the soldiers, and if 
need be for purposes of intimidation, they are put in 
jail. 

But these repeated and violent outbreaks are both 
discomforting and expensive to the owner, so the gen¬ 
tlemen represented by the figure at the right organize 
also, to employ a subtler means of keeping the 
workers quiescent. This means is represented by the 
book. It is the Dominant Thought of the State. This 
book stands for the school, the press, the pulpit and 
all institutions where the written and spoken word are 
employed to influence public opinion. 

When young Mr. Workingman goes into a 
schoolhouse he finds a teacher in front reading out of 
a book. From the book she reads as follows: “Early 
to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, 
wealthy and wise.” The working man takes the idea 
and puts in his head. He believes it. He acts on it. 
He goes to bed at nine, gets up with the alarm clock, 
works hard all day, saves all he can. He may be 
healthy, he is getting wise, but he is surprised to find 
that the promised wealth has vanished away. Mr. 
Owner goes to bed at midnight, gets up at noon, and 
look at him! 

Having been disappointed in school, or deprived 
of school advantages our worker friend seeks re¬ 
dress of grievances in church. There he finds a black 
frocked gentleman reading out of a book. From the 
book he reads: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven.” With this assurance he is 
solaced, for another six days. Should he eventually 
become restless or inquisitive he is told that he should 


48 


ASCENT OF MAN 


have no care for the things of this earth, but should 
keep his eye on his home in heaven. This he resolves 
to do, but while his gaze is fixed on high, a real estate 
dealer comes along and grabs the home he has on 
earth. 

Should he ignore the counsels of the teacher and 
the preacher, and get in conflict with the authorities, 
he is taken into court where he again finds an official 
of the state, reading out of a book. The judge ad¬ 
dressing the jury says: “Strikes are a conspiracy 
against the government ,and the welfare of the com¬ 
munity ; thirty days for you.” 

Or, finding his way to a bench in the park, our 
friend picks up a copy of the morning “Times” and 
reads the editorial page: “He that never does any 
more work than he gets paid for, never gets paid for 
anymore than he does.” Having finished the edi¬ 
torials he turns to the news items. There he finds an 
interview from a great employer of labor, it says: “I 
submit the conclusion that the unemployed as a class 
are at present unemployable. They do not earn the 
wages they are willing to work for; they will not 
work for the wages we pay them. They do not pull 
their own weight; and at the present stage of the 
game we do not know how to induce them.” Such 
statements of course are filled with apparent truths 
and fundamental fallacies. 

The man who owns the state dictates what is 
written in “the book.” Whether it is a school book, 
law book, Sunday school book, newspaper, magazine 
or political platform, nothing is permitted to appear 
therein that in any way menaces his ownership and 
control of the wealth of the world. 

Should a professor, a scientist, a philosopher, a 
poet, editor, artist or priest write anything in the 
book that opposes this arrangement, that person is 
immediately deprived of his position; his means of 


ASCENT OF MAN 


49 


livelihood are cut off; he is socially ostracised and 
held up as a horrible example of ingratitude, incom¬ 
petence and perverseness. 

So, these are the means employed to maintain the 
status quo; the gun and the book; the Physical Arm 
of the State and the Dominant Thought of the State; 
compulsion and persuasion; force and fraud. 

Persuasion or “psychology” is employed in all 
cases where it accomplishes the desired results. When 
such means fail, force is resorted to. And thus the 
working class although greatly outnumbering the 
owning class, and greatly their superior in practical 
knowledge and power, are kept in willing or enforced 
subjection to the will of the minority, whose interests 
they serve. 

First the wealth of the world which forms the 
economic foundation of society; then the working 
classes who produce the wealth; then the owning 
classes who are in possession and control of the 
wealth, directing the Physical Arm of the State and 
manipulating the Dominant Thought of the State; 
these are the gears of our social machinery. If we 
take all these and fit them together, we see how 
smoothly an industrial society is managed in the in¬ 
terest of a few. 

But having followed the history of mankind from 
savagery to modern civilization, we know that finality 
has not been reached. We now know that this civil¬ 
ization of ours is not necessarily just or equitable be¬ 
cause it happens to be ours. We now know that 
things are not as they were; and that there is small 
likelihood of their remaining indefinitely as they are. 
As the working classes grow in consciousness of their 
function in society and of their power, they will de¬ 
mand a larger and larger share of the wealth of the 
world and of the benefits of their own labor. As they 


50 


ASCENT OF MAN 


grow in knowledge they will perfect more efficient 
organizations through which to obtain their ends. 

In the past, as we have seen, man has advanced 
step by step from a lower to a higher plane. The 
desire to live better has led him ever on and on. This 
attraction is not less today than in the past. From 
this point in social evolution it is to be assumed that 
man will go forward to better things. 

Grandmother has told when we were young that 
once upon a time man occupied a high estate at the 
right hand of God. But when we grew up and had 
access to the accumulated knowledge of our time, we 
found that man began his career on earth—not as an 
angel on high, but as a poor naked savage; that he was 
a glutton, a thief and perhaps a cannibal. But he 
began to understand the world about him; he suffered 
for his mistakes and learned to avoid them. He dis¬ 
covered fire and became a cook, a metal worker, a 
potter; he discovered gravity and became a miller 
and a clocksmith; he discovered the use of wind, and 
became a navigator and explorer and “beyond the 
baths of sunset found new lands.” He discovered 
steam and became a manufacturer, a merchant and an 
industrialist. He discovered electricity and became 
an informer, a communicator and an amalgamator of 
the races. He conquered all the great invisible forces 
of nature, in turn: fire, wind, gravitation, steam, elec¬ 
tricity—the atom and electron are today within his 
grasp. 

Discoveries are pending in the realm of health, 
sanitation and physical rejuvenation, which will prob¬ 
ably greatly extended his life on earth; in communica¬ 
tion he is about to banish time and space; in psychol¬ 
ogy he has unified science and religion; in production 
he is liberating great forces that enable him to provide 
for all men’s wants, and to have leisure for real living. 
From a pain economy he is about to emerge into a 


ASCENT OF MAN 


51 


pleasure economy. Instead of being driven by fear he 
will make happiness and art his ambition; he is pass¬ 
ing from selfish greed to a social consciousness, and 
he is putting even morality and ethics on a scientific 
basis. Leisure for art, drama’, poetry, music, travel, 
are within his grasp. He has but to reach out and 
take them. Surely with our intelligent co-operation 
each day is taking us forward one step higher in the 
Ascent of Man. 


PERIODS IN WORLD HISTORY 


Years 

Age of the Earth.72,000,000 

Nebulous Age .16,000,000 

Stellar Age .14,000,000 

Vulcan Age . 9,000,000 

Neptune Age . 8,000,000 

Island Age . 6,000,000 

Unicellular Age . 5,000,000 

Invertabrate Age . 3,500,000 

Fishes . 3,000,000 

Amphibians . 2,500,000 

Reptiles . 2,000,000 

Birds . 1,500,000 

Mammals. 900,000 

Man . 240,000 

AGES OF MAN Years 

Arboreal Age. 150,000 

Migatory . 60,000 

Hunting . 20,000 

Pastoral . 8,000 

Agrarian . 3,000 

Industrial . 500 


RECORDED HISTORY 

Egypt, Civilization Begins.5510 B. C. 

Sumer and Accad.3750 “ 

Crete .3500 “ 

Hebrews . 2200 

Phoenicians . I 580 

Hittites . (?) 

Persians .1000 

Lydians . (?) „ 

Greece . 776 

Rome . 753 

Following the beginning of the XIV. Century gunpowder, 
the compass and printing were invented; navigation was extended 
to the oceans. These advances inaugurated the Atlantic Age, or 
Industrial Era in world history. 

































52 


ASCENT OF MAN 


BOOK LIST 

The one hundred books given in the list below have in one 
form or another contributed to the author’s outlook on life. In 
so far as education influences any man’s work the following 
books comprise the background from which this little pamphlet 
is written. 

THE GEOLOGIC DAY 

Ancient Life History, H. Alleyne Nicholson. 

The Childhood of the World, Edzvard Clodd. 

Organic Evolution, Richard Swann Lull. 

The New History, James Harvey Robinson. 

Popular Astronomy, Camille Flammarion. 

What Will Posterity Say of Us, Hermit of Prague. 

Pure Sociology, Lester Frank Ward. 

History of Social Development, Dr. F. Miiller-Lyer. 

Making of the Earth, J. W. Gregory. 

Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb. 

Structure of the Earth, T. G. Bonney. 

Age of the Earth, Arthur Holmes. 

Glimpses of the Cosmos, Lester Frank Ward. 

The World Machine, Carl Snyder. 

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 

Landmarks of Scientific Socialism, Frederick Engels. 

Theoretical System of Karl Marx, Louis: B. Boudin. 

Feuerbach, Frederick Engels. 

Divine Pymander, Hermes Trismegistus. 

History of Philosophy, Frank Thilly. 

Socialism—Utopian and Scientific, Frederick Engels. 

Easy Lessons in Einstein, Edwin E. Slosson. 

Mind in the Making, James Harvey Robinson. 

Paradoxes of the Highest Science, Abbe Constant. 

Book Four, Frater Perdurabo. 

Hey-Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Theodore Dreiser. 

Essays in Scientific Synthesis, Eugenio Rignano. 

Scientific Method in Philosophy, Bertrand Russell. 

Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche. 

Problems of Philosophy, John Grier Hibben. 

Life of Reason, George Santayana. 

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche. 

Kempton-Wace Letters, Jack London. 

Darwinism and History, J. B. Bury. 

Creative Revolution, Eden and Cedar Paul. 

The Great Secret, Maurice Maeterlinck. 

Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell. 

Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche. 

Psychic Factors of Civilization, Lester Frank Ward. 

The Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus. 

Modern Science and the Illusion of Professor Bergson, Hugh 
S. R. Elliot. 

Materialism and Modern Science, Hugh S. R. Elliot. 


53 


ASCENT OF MAN 
DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 

Ancient Society, Lewis H. Morgan. 

Economic Foundation of Modern Society, Achille Loria. 

History of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, Jacob Abbott. 

Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade. 

Revolutions of Civilization, W. M. Flinders Petrie. 

The Evolution of Revolution, H. M. Hyndman. 

The Ancient Lowly, C. Osborne Ward. 

Prehistoric Man and His Story, G. F. Scott Elliott. 

Outline of History, Herbert George Wells. 

Ancient Man, Hendrik Willem van Loon. 

Story of Mankind, Henrik Willem van Loon. 

Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling. 

Ancient Times, James Henry Breasted. 

Old and New Testaments, Moses, Solomon, Paul and others. 
Medieval and Modern Times, James Harvey Robinson. 

World History for Workers, Alfred Barton. 

Vital Problems in Social Evolution, Arthur Morrow Lewis. 

The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams. 

The Science of History, James Anthony Froude 
The Logic of History, C. G. Crump. 

The Period of Industrial Revolution, Arthur Jones. 

History of Rome, Charles Merrivale. 

Anabasis, Xenophon. 

The Origin and Evolution of the Idea of the Soul, Paul La- 
fargue. 

History of the Roman People, Charles Seignobos. 

Origin of Inventions, Otis T. Mason. 

An Introduction to Anthropology, E. O. James. 

Ancient Art and Ritual, Jane E. Harrison. 

In This Our World, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon. 

Story of Geographical Discovery, Joseph Jacobs. 

This Simian World, Clarence Day, Jr. 

The Living Past, F. S. Marvin. 

History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Andrew Dick¬ 
son White. 

Folkways, William Graham Sumner. 

Ancient Hunters, W. J. Sollas. 

Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry Fairfield Osborne. 

De TAmour, Henry Beyle-Stendhal. 

Anthropology, R. R. Marett. 

Evolution of Property, Paul Lafargue. 

MODERN SOCIETY 

The Psychology of Dress, Frank Alvah Parsons. 

The American Language, Henry L. Mencken. 

Problems of a New World, J. A. Hobson. 

History of Great American Fortunes, Gustavus Myers. 

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx. 


54 


ASCENT OF MAN 


Social Psychology, Edward Alsworth Ross. 

Applied Sociology, Lester Frank Ward. 

Value, Price and Profit, Karl Marx. 

Social Therapeutics, Stanley M. Bligh. 

The Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes. 
Pliny’s Letters to the Emperor Trajan, Alfred Church. 

The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli. 

Reflections on Violence, Georges Sorel. 

Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, W. Trotter. 

Reflections and Moral Maxims, Francois due de La Rochefou¬ 
cauld. 

Political Parties, Robert Michels. 

The Right to Be Lazy, Paul Lafargue. 

Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw. 

Theory of the Leisure Class, Thor stein Veblen. 


CARDS OF THANKS 

In this place it is desired to express appreciation to those 
who have in one form or another given their talents, money and 
time to the completion and publication of this work. Their names 
are as follows: 

Maude Ball, .. 

Adolph Ferchland, 

William Kern, 

Dr. Alfred Connar, 

Joseph A. Strohmeyer, 

Joseph Goldberg, 

Ralph Lencioni, 

P. Talsma, 

H. Jensen. 

Nestor Headland. 


P D 


1 . 3 . 2 



ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE 

All knowledge of the material universe codified 
and co-related. Reduced to its simplest, broadest and 
most fundamental generalizations. 

I. VIEWPOINT. The orientation of the mind. 
A system of thinking that enables one to comprehend 
the relationship of all knowledge. 

II. THE BRAIN AS AN ORGAN OF 
KNOWLEDGE. Its possibilities and limitations. 
How much can man know? 

III. PRINCIPLES OF ASTRONOMY AND 
PHYSICS. Analogous laws prevailing in -both sci¬ 
ences. 

IV. PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY AND 
BIOLOGY. Relation of all the sciences, one to the 
other. 

V. PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY AND 
SOCIOLOGY. The mind of the individual and the 
actions of groups. The relation one to the other. 

VI. CHART OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE. 

Generalized knowledge. All the learning of all the 
ages done into a vest pocket chart. 

Lectures, classes and private instruction. Apply 
for terms and conditions. Appointments may be 
made by personal call, mail or telephone, West 1723. 


Write for a description of 
“MAP OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE” 

All Scientific Knowledge done into a neat Chart. 


CENTRAL SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL 
PSYCHOLOGY 

Room 3, 1605 W. Van Buren St., Chicago. 



Central School gf 
Practical Psychology 

1605 W. Van Buren Street, 

Chicago, Illinois 

Offers Courses of Lectures, Classes and Private 
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Speaking, Correct English, Memory Training, Psy¬ 
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Courses in Ancient Wisdom, for those who wish 
to improve in personality and mental power. 

BOOKS TO READ 

GENIUS AND HEREDITY, by Maude Ball. 
Are talent an'd achievement the result of the environ¬ 
ment or a natural endowment? Both sides of the 
question fully discussed. Price, postpaid 25 cents. 

EFFECTIVE THINKING, by Samuel W. Ball. 
A system of thinking in science, history, economics and 
politics. Establishes a viewpoint for all reasoning. 
Price, postpaid 12 cents. 

WORLD KNOWLEDGE CLASSIFIED, by 

Samuel W. Ball. A history of the classification of 
knowledge. A key to the relations of all scientific 
knowledge done into a small book. Price, postpaid 
12 cents. 

ASCENT OF MAN, by Samuel W. Ball. Illus¬ 
trated. History of social development. The story of 
how man came to be what he is. Price, postpaid 50 
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